Does Anyone Watch ABC Anymore?

I wonder if my letters of protest to ABC over their upcoming “dramatization“ of 9/11 would be more effective if I actually watched any of their programs, other than an occasional football game?

Truthfully, most of television has become profoundly irrelevant to me. The only dramatic show I watch with any regularity is “The Closer,� and I doubt I would be watching that regularly if there was anything better on.

My television watching is generally limited to the Mariners, “The Daily Show,� and occasionally glimpses of CNN Headlines while eating lunch.

Thank goodness for the internet or I’d really be cut off from the world other than an occasional visit with other retired individuals while out walking and birdwatching, occasional breakfasts with fellow poetry lovers, and time spent with kids and grandkids.

It seems to me that the American media is determined to become as obsolete as American auto makers. Does ABC think they can somehow appease neo-conservatives by presenting right-wing docudramas? Or having previously infuriated the religious right, are they merely trying to insure that they alienate all possible constituencies?

More broadly, I’m concerned with the increasing tendency to “fictionalize� history, to present it not through well-researched docoumentaries but through fictional accounts that have no need to “stick to the facts.� I remember how outraged I was when students told me a high school history teacher was using television mini-series to “teach history,� or, at the very least, to supplement historical texts that already seemed more determined to indoctrinate students with patriotic fervor than to reveal the kind of deeper truths that allow democracies to function effectively.

At the very least, ABC’s determination to air a show written by a conservative writer who
“spoke on a panel titled, ‘Rebels With a Cause: How Conservatives Can Lead Hollywood’s Next Paradigm Shift‘“
would seem to further undermine the credibility of their news broadcasts at a time when all of the networks are struggling for market share.

Certainly such a show once and for all should dispel the myth of “the liberal media� bias, which apparently referred to long-abandoned attempts of the media to provide an “objective,� “factual� view of the events of the day. No wonder bloggers believe that they are just as credible as the network media. No one needs to worry about facts anymore. Spin is all.

Good Time for a Trip

Judging from my final trip to Nisqually before my week-long trip to Colorado, I’m leaving at the perfect time. Though I did see a few Great Blue Herons today, I didn’t see many other birds. It appeared that they all had something better to do with their time:

In fact, the highlight of my day was discovering a huge wasp/hornet nest beside the trail, though it seemed more important to get by quickly than to get a real good shot of it:

Of course, as I’ve discovered several times before, you often discover the unexpected when you don’t see the expected:

This moth/butterfly, blended in with the falling leaves so well that I had a very hard time actually focusing the camera,

An Unexpected Greeting

Upon visiting the Rose Garden today I was greeted by locked gates and this sign. It reminded me why I don’t grow roses, or anything else that can’t survive with minimal care and an extra dose of water. Do you think it might explain why my small garden has more butterflies than the Rose Garden?

I was disappointed by the closure but not so disappointed that I didn’t visit the nearby Japanese garden, where the pond seemed even more beautiful than usual.

It turned out that the groundskeepers were merely waiting for the pesticides to dry. Do you think all the bees and wasps waited until they dried, too? Or will this turn into a modern-day equivalent of Rappaccinni’s Garden, producing mutant insects?

I could’ve sworn I used a photo exactly like this in my blog last year. If so, I certainly couldn’t find it in August or September’s entries.

Oh well, as I’ve been discovering in my musical studies, beautiful notes bear repeating,

Frazzled

I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling a little worn around the edges, not that I’ve done enough work to deserve such a feeling.

Perhaps it’s merely a surfeit of beauty. Perhaps I’ve photographed one too many beautiful flowers, pursued one too many green herons, walked too many miles in my own shoes.

I know when I visited Vancouver and saw old friends who were still teaching I marveled that they could drag themselves back to school another year. Most have now taught several years longer than I did before retiring.

Perhaps it’s merely the INTP in me, a personality seeking new adventures, new challenges, hating mindless routine, endless repetition. Luckily, education met those demands better than most occupations or I could never have stuck with it for thirty years. Still, after thirty years the sense of deja vu was more than I wanted to endure.

At the moment, though, I’m feeling caught ‘twixt and ‘tween, not quite through summer, not quite ready for fall. After last week’s hectic schedule, this is a down week, but Saturday I’m heading to Colorado for a week with kids and grandkids.

I’ve just finished reading Yi-FuTuan’s Space and Place, and there’s much I’d like to say about it but don’t feel I have time to adequately cover before I leave. I’m starting Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space and suspect I’ll get considerable reading done at the airport and on the plane, both going and coming. Hopefully when I get back I can comment on both and add my own reflections on a sense of place, a topic I’ve been increasingly focused on since moving back to the Puget Sound region.

So, don’t expect many new revelations from me in the next few weeks. I’ll still be posting some pictures and ideas that I hope might actually pass for thoughts, but I’m not quite up to starting back to a regular schedule of reading poetry and non-fiction just yet.